Sample Audit · Unpaid & Unsolicited

Independent Website Audit Preview: City of San José

Site reviewed: sanjoseca.gov Prepared by: ZenMasterWorks Date: June 2026

Methodology & scope: This is a preview-level audit built entirely from publicly available information — the site's content as returned to a standard, non-JavaScript-executing fetch, the kind search engine crawlers and some accessibility tooling use. No production or staging access was requested or used, and no full browser-based device testing was performed for this unpaid preview. A full paid engagement includes that complete hands-on testing.

Note on scope: This audit covers the City's public-facing website only. It is not a comment on city governance, policy, or any department's performance — purely a technical and accessibility review of how the site itself is built and served.

Findings

What stood out

Critical

Several core informational pages return no content without JavaScript

At least six pages — covering city government structure, departments, official records, and a disability access grant program — returned only the fallback text "Please enable JavaScript in your browser for a better user experience" when fetched the way a search crawler or non-JS-executing tool would. The homepage itself does not have this problem and returns full real content, so this appears to be specific to one interior page template rather than the whole site. For a government site, where search visibility and universal access matter more than almost anywhere else, pages that are effectively blank to anything that can't fully execute JavaScript is a meaningful risk — both for search discoverability and for any assistive technology or low-bandwidth context that doesn't run JS the same way a modern desktop browser does.

/your-government — JS-only fallback
/your-government/departments-offices — JS-only fallback
/your-government/city-council — JS-only fallback
/your-government/official-city-records — JS-only fallback
/residents — JS-only fallback

Medium

At least one legacy URL pattern still in active use

The City's own published ADA Notice page resolves through an old-style index.aspx?NID=2494 URL format — a pattern typically associated with an older municipal CMS platform running alongside the newer site. Worth confirming whether this reflects a genuinely separate legacy subsystem still being maintained, or content that should be migrated to the current platform.

Low

Heavy reliance on PDF documents for public information

Several key resources (accessibility fact sheets, program bulletins) are served as PDF documents rather than HTML pages. PDFs are harder to keep accessible, harder for search engines to index well, and harder to update quickly compared to a normal web page.

For Balance

What's genuinely working

A real, named, publicly contactable ADA Coordinator (Christopher Hickey, Office of Equality Assurance) with a published phone, TTY, and email — this is genuine institutional commitment, not a checkbox.

A formal, documented ADA grievance process with accommodations explicitly offered for completing the form itself — including alternative formats on request.

A Disability Access Improvement Grant program that helps small businesses pay for accessibility remediation — a concrete, practical program beyond just the City's own site.

The homepage itself is content-rich and well-organized, with clear, frequently used resident services surfaced prominently (payments, reporting tools, public meeting access).

This is the preview. The full audit goes much further.

A complete engagement would directly confirm the JavaScript-rendering gap with real browser and crawler testing, run a full WCAG 2.1 AA pass against the City's own stated accessibility goal, and map exactly which page templates are affected — delivered as one prioritized report.

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